The Lower Level

Article By: Elsie Lamarr

Last week, we talked about the schematics of the World Ship, the four major areas of the ship’s construction, and even took a peek at what the ship might look like from the outside.

This week, we’re going to talk more about the most important part of the ship that we focus on as Explorers here. The section of the ship known as the Habitat.

The Habitat is made of an enclosed environmentally controlled system. It’s a vast container broken into two major levels. Our town, for example, is located on what is known as the Lower Level. These levels are then broken into major sections, each of which can be sectioned off from other areas of the ship if needed.

For today’s letter, we’ll focus on that area, our home, the Lower Level.

The Lower Level highlighted in blue.

Overview

First and foremost, the ship’s schematics, which we deciphered only recently, have shown us about the existence of several sections of the Lower Level that we have yet to fully understand. In fact, using what we now know, we have compiled a list of every open area of the ship, defined as sections, and can list them here:

Lower Level

Section 00: The Core

Section 01: The Grid

Section 02: The Warehouse/Pantry

Section 03: The Town

Section 04: The Frontier

Section 05: The Garage

Section 06: The Garden* (not discussed here)

Below is an rendering created to represent the Lower Level as a whole. You can see in the image a few unique identifiers that I hope convey the scale of our world. The yellow square represents all of our town. The red square on Mount Machina represents the recently founded Winter Village, while the lime green and brown squares represent the growing rural housing and farming communities that have taken root near Willow Creek.

Not pictured here, Willow Creek feeds out into another section of the World Ship known as the Garden. This is labeled as Section 06 in our schematics, but our modeling team left it out of the render as it is considered its own component of the larger ship.

3D Rendering of the Lower Level.

Section 00: The Core

At the very center of our World Ship is a solid cube made of incredibly dense materials. We have yet to produce or procure a tool that can penetrate the material. In reality, we don’t want to try. It was likely designed to be impenetrable on purpose. The Core provides the World Ship with citizens like you or me. In fact, save for a few newly-budding families, every single person in town came from within the Core. We don’t know the science behind it, but we do know that citizens arrive with no memories other than their names, and the added benefit of a latent skill set that usually reveals itself over the course of the next few months.

Section 01: The Grid

The Grid is also a highly secure area, though not nearly as protected as the Core. It looks like a server tower of machines, but the computer tower is the size of a small city. This is where the World Ship’s mainframe computer system is housed. It appears to be the brain of our home, with everything from temperature controls to water recycling being managed from this one metallic metropolis. The Grid is also home to the Explorers outpost due to its sheer size and large flat surfaces perfect for construction. All of the Explorer One, Explorer Two, and helicopter missions are executed and monitored from the Grid.

Section 02: The Warehouse/Pantry

In the image above, you can see a small area highlighted in a light blue. This entire segment of the World Ship is a large storage area and mechanical storage wonderland that we call the Warehouse. From what we understand, the World Ship has several internal production chains that zig and zag through the thick insulating walls of the Habitat. In the Warehouse, our citizens can highlight materials they need, both from pre-determined information in the system, or by entering their own designs. Once tasked, the World Ship provides, building whatever we need and presenting it to us through the Warehouse.

In addition to this, we have discovered another element within the Warehouse that we are temporarily referring to as the Pantry. This area appears to work similarly to the systems in place for the Warehouse, but instead of building materials or vehicles, it can offer a variety of food storage solutions for long term windows. This could prove invaluable to our society as we continue to grow crops with more yield than our current population needs. A reduction in waste and higher reserves can help us all in the future, no matter what may come. Unfortunately, the Pantry appears to be offline at this time, but we’ll have more on that later.

Section 03: The Town

While the yellow square in the earlier image represented the current size of town, this section of the ship is much larger, and can accomodate a much larger area than our simple main street strip. In fact, we will be able to expand and build new structures for centuries to come if we manage our footprints and waste management in good fashion.

This area of the World Ship, like any open area, had pre-established water and waste lines that run under the soil, ready for us to tap in with our new structures. It makes things a lot easier for new construction and has helped alleviate a lot of the pains that typically comes with city planning.

Section 04: The Frontier

Just like the town, this section of the World Ship is meant for expansive habitation. There are rolling green hills, flowing fields, and a massive water system that snakes it away throughout. Our citizens have simply taken to calling it the Frontier. It is considered the most fertile and attractive area of the World Ship, so it’s already drawing large crowds of citizens looking to spread out and earn their keep. William Everett, our town architect, has contributed to the designs and construction of dozens of homes in the rural community, as well as planning out farming areas with Katherine Willow.

Section 05: The Garage

There’s not much to report here yet. The Garage is our current source of fascination. From what we understand, the Garage is a hangar bay for two smaller, though still massive by our scale, supply ships. These are known as the Travelers. The Travelers come and go from our World Ship, flying out into the void of space to mine resources from asteroids, such as ice for clean water, or raw metals to use in the maintenance of our home.

This area of the World Ship is considered extremely dangerous, and we prohibit anyone from traveling through the massive bulkhead that separates that area from the rest of the World Ship. Unlike other bulkheads, this one requires specific commands, sent directly from the Grid, or it will not open. There is an intentional design to keep these ships sealed away from our interaction, and we intend to keep it that way.

Section 06: The Garden

If we consider the Frontier to be an unexplored land, then we consider the Garden to be an enigma. Unlike all of the other sections of the Habitat, the Garden is a terrarium that has no climate control, no underground infrastructure, and no orderly design. It appears to be a truly untamed environment, but that does not mean it is not without its purpose. We believe that most of the carbon dioxide that our citizens expel is filtered through the massive Garden where plants convert it into breathable oxygen, before sending it back through for us again.

The Garden, highlighted in bright green.

Next Time…

I know this may seem like a lot of information, but believe it or not, we’ve only covered the Lower Level of the habitat. Next week, we can take a closer look at the layout of the Upper Level, and we can discuss the dangers that come with the unknown!